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A STORY OF FAITH By Charles
Gearhart Faith Ringgold (1930--Present) was
born in Harlem and grew up during the Great Depression. Because she has asthma,
Faith did not start school until the second grade and even then she missed a
lot. While she was young, her mother taught and took her to museums. She was
able to see famous stars like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Ella
Fitzgerald at the Paramount Theater. During her sick days, her mother would
give her paper, crayons, cloth, needle, and thread so she could make artistic
things. Faith had an art professor at City
College of New York, who told her she did not have any artistic talent. So
she set out to prove him wrong and graduated with an art degree. During
college, she was taught to copy Greek busts and paintings by Cézanne and
Rembrandt. However, she desired her own style. So, she incorporated the bold,
flat shapes, symmetry, repetition, patterns, and textures of African design
with her American-European cultural training and created an African-American
style uniquely her own. Inspired by fourteenth-century
Tibetan tankas (large paintings on fabric that were framed with brightly
colored brocades) and early in her artistic career, she experimented with
painting on unstretched canvases framed in cloth. These works are what Faith
Ringgold calls her "early quilts." Using her knowledge of African
art as well, she experimented with soft sculptural forms and masks, mixing
the sewing she learned from her mother, Madame Willi Posey, who was a fashion
designer and dressmaker, with traditional fine art forms she learned in
school. Also knowing that the quilt was an African woman's creation, Faith
made her first quilt, "Echoes of Harlem," in 1986 as a collaborated
effort with her mother. Although Faith started her artistic career in the
early 1970s, she has since become an internationally renowned artist. Today, Faith Ringgold is best known
for her painted story quilts- art that combines painting, quilted
fabric, and story telling. Her story quit "The Dinner Quilt" was
created in 1986 and has been exhibited in major museums around the country
and is now kept in a private collection. Faith Ringgold now lives in
Englewood, New Jersey. She is married to Burdette Ringgold and has two
daughters and three granddaughters. She is an Art Professor at the University
of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, California, where she teaches half the
year. She has received more than 50 awards and honors for her artwork
and books, including the Solomon W. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting and
seven honorary doctorates, one of which is from the City College of New York,
her alma mater. Faith's first book, Tar Beach was
a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for
illustration, among other numerous honors. Her second book, Dinner at Aunt
Connie’s House, which was based on her story quit, "The Dinner
quilt," won her the Parenting magazine Reading Magic Award. Bonjour,
Lonnie and Talking with Faith Ringgold are Faith Ringgold's third
and fourth books published for children. |
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One of Faith’s Many Books |
